We were an alternative school. We didn’t have a principal; we had co-directors. We didn’t have counselors; we had advisors, and each of us had to take on that role, responsible for a caseload of fifteen students. I’d added the phone numbers of my advisees’ parents into my cell phone, and I’m sure they had mine added on theirs.
Originally, Javon wasn’t my advisee. I wasn’t even his teacher, and boy, was I grateful. He was the school’s biggest headache. His nickname was Waga. Sounded like baby talk to me. He’d skipped a grade back in elementary school, his proof he was a genius.
That first year of our school, San Francisco State University housed us, our classrooms on the same floor as college classes, but within a few months, we received enough complaints that we feared we’d get the boot. When we’d investigate a complaint, the trail inevitably led back to Javon.
He dribbled a basketball in the hallway, disrupting a professor’s class. He took a groundskeeper’s golf cart for a joyride across campus. He stumbled upon a wheelchair in the gym and rode laps around the court, even though the owner of the chair, an SF State professor, shouted and hobbled after him on crutches.
My advisees, in comparison, were angels. The biggest headache I had was one being too clingy. This student, wearing her usual gray hoodie, would slip me letters before school, during passing period, and after school. She mostly wrote about typical freshmen anxiety, not making friends, that type of thing. She was Chinese and signed the letters Mui Mui, Little Sister. One teacher suggested I set boundaries. I couldn’t, though. The student’s family resembled mine growing up—a family that relied on an absent (migrant?) father to make ends meet. Her dad would visit from Hong Kong once a year during Christmas, and that’s when the student wrote the longest letters. Nothing in her writing merited a call to CPS, but from the way she’d act—she’d clam up whenever she tried to talk about her dad—I’d expected a bombshell.
Fine, I told her, you can call me Goh Goh, Older Brother.
It was a reversal of roles. I was the youngest in my family, and my mother had raised us under a clear hierarchy. She was at the top, infallible. My father, Bah Ba, came second, and he wasn’t around enough to dispute this. Next in line was Goh Goh, then Ga Jeh, my older sister. I had a title too, Sai Lo, Littler Brother, but my siblings simply called me by my first name. I wasn’t allowed to address them by theirs. First name privileges were a one-way street: older to younger. Another privilege they had—kicking my ass. I was taught not to fight back. “Who told you to be the youngest?” my mother would say.
My sister and I, as teenagers, rarely communicated. It seemed the only time we spoke was to fight over the phone. She’d storm into the room, yelling at me to get off, throwing around the word “urgent,” as if lives were at stake. Then she’d get on the phone, and all she’d do was sweet talk some boy or talk about whether or not she should sweet talk some boy.
Later, as adults, Ga Jeh and I would commiserate over failed relationships. We’d end our conversations with “I love you.” No one said that in our family growing up, which I hadn’t had a problem with. In fact, it’d been a source of cultural pride: we’re not into that touchy-feely crap! But now my sister had gotten in the habit of telling us that she loved us. My brother and mother wouldn’t reciprocate her I love yous. I, on the other hand, went along. I couldn’t leave my sis hanging. We were closer than we’d ever been, though when it came to discussing our father, Ga Jeh and I still weren’t able to confront the past together.
overlap
I got sucked into Javon’s orbit when an advisee confided to me that Javon had stolen a teacher’s wallet. I reported this to the staff, and they nominated me to squeeze a confession out of Javon. When there was a pressing student issue and the co-directors weren’t around, I became the default dean.
I had Javon sit by my desk in the main office. All the teacher desks were located in this room, abutting and facing each other, the close proximity meant to foster a family-like atmosphere. We even divided students and teachers into families, clusters of students who would share the same teachers, but one veteran teacher complained about all this rhetoric of family. “I got my own,” she said. “I don’t need another one.”
Javon rose from his chair. “I gotta be somewhere,” he said as though he had a pressing appointment.
“It can wait. Sit.”
Javon fell back in his chair, still wearing his backpack, which featured a cartoon image of three girls with humongous eyes.
“Who’s that on your bag?” I asked him.
“Powerpuff Girls.”
“Boys like that show too, huh?”
“I know what you’re trying to say, Mr. Lam. That’s sexist.”
“You like this school?”
“Not really.”
“I can help you transfer.”
“To where?”
“How about Balboa?”
“Hell, nah. I’ll stay here.”
“Three different students have told me—and they put this in writing—that they saw you steal Ms. Mana’s wallet.” I only had the one statement from my advisee, but three testimonies sounded indisputable. I understood deceit was an effective strategy for an interrogator. As a young teenager, my friends and I had stolen frequently from a baseball card shop until the owner offered us jobs. He handed us index cards and told us to jot down our contact info. We raced to finish the cards. “Print neatly,” he said. We shoved each other aside to hand him our index cards, to get picked for an interview. I was chosen first. The owner brought me to his office in the back. He closed the door and said an
